A cult of quality

One of my favorite books about software engineering is Peopleware by Tom DeMarco and Timothy Lister, and one of my favorite parts of that book is the introduction of the phrase “cult of quality.” DeMarco and Lister define this as a team that has decided “only perfect is good enough for us.” While most of the world won’t argue for higher quality, members of a cult of quality will “always turn out something that’s better than what their market is asking for.”

Check it out and let me know what you think. If you’re a software engineer, do you work in a cult of quality? If not, how can you make your environment into one? And if you’re not in software engineering, how can you live a cult of quality in whatever it is you do?